116 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



They expected they were going to get a good many thousand plants 

 and make considerable money out of it, and it does not meet their 

 expectations in that direction. And just let me make a suggestion 

 here. I would not advise anybody to buy largelj^ of the Jewell or any 

 other new variety until they have tried it in a small way. A dozen 

 plants well taken care of will tell the story and tell it pretty soon. 

 Whenever you have any variety of strawberry that multiplies slowly, 

 and you regard it as a fault, suppose you have a dozen plants, 3'ou 

 take your plants from those plants which make the greatest number 

 of runners, use those for stock and let the others go to fruit, and 

 keep repeating that year after year, and you will find that the 

 capacity for multiplication will increase. We are doing that every 

 year ; for our stock plants we select from the best and from those 

 which are the most prolific in runners. We have no fear about 

 productiveness. 



Just let me say here, as perhaps there have been various reports 

 about it, that a few years ago we had a field day on our grounds, and 

 on a piece of one twenty-second of an acre of strawberries that we set 

 about the first of August, the number of quarts of berries exceeded the 

 number of the plants. That is, we had more than one quart to a plant, 

 some plants yielding two quarts and a little over. It takes fifteen 

 thousand and some hundreds of plants to the acre, where they are 

 set twenty inches apart each way. At a quart to a plant, if you 

 can secure that, you have over 450 bushels to the acre. I do not 

 say that you can secure that ; it would be perhaps the exception ; 

 but I simply mention it to show that if you can reach the maximum 

 you will obtain a large crop. There is one objection to the method 

 of hill culture, and it is this : That when the grubs are numerous 

 on a piece they dig and reduce your stock so rapidly as to be very 

 discouraging, and we do not like to adopt that plan unless we are 

 pretty sure of being free from the grub. And even then we have a 

 bed alongside, where we have a reserve of plants, so that in case 

 we lose one occasionally we supply its place at once, of course find- 

 ing the grub and destroying him. It is always seen when we plant 

 on new land, but when we plant on land that has been cultivated 

 two years, we feel pretty confident of not being troubled very much 

 with the grub. 



Question. What do you think of fall planting as compared with 

 spring planting ot strawberries? 



